Better Late than Never, so Don’t Settle.

For the last months, I’ve found my favorite sport: weightlifting. It started from crossfit in March 2017, then evolve as a love in weightlifting in the last few months.

Last week, I joined my first club competition. It was a practice to compete and I faced a hard fact: they are all so young! 13, 17, 20 years old girls… some of them compete at an Elite level. I don’t care about age in general but in sport, age does matter. Four years from now, I won’t even be able to compete on senior age group.

It struck me and made me think ‘oh, I wish I found this earlier.’ but then, I guess I can’t really complain about it, can I? I had my love of basketball during high school. Above all the fun I had, I found the best people in my life through basketball. This, I won’t change with anything on earth. Again, this reassures me how I can’t complain about my late findings in weightlifting.

I joined crossfit as I was bored with my regular training. I didn’t want to lift before – instead, I hate lifting. I remember how I rejected squatting with my boyfriend back then. Then I joined crossfit as I thought it’s a high-intensity training and I love high-intensity training. I decided to sign up in a box straight away after my first trial.

Few weeks doing WODs, my competitive side started to grow. ‘I want to compete’, I said to myself. Then, I observe, I read, I watch how competitors train. They don’t do WODs, they train with a specific program. They become strong and I was nowhere close to strong. Thus, I decided to gain strength via a solid strength programming. If I want to catch up with my strength, I need to have a solid programming that focuses on this. And that how thing started.

Time passes by, I started to understand the lifting world even better. Understand the differences between powerlifting and weightlifting. Tried both, hated weightlifting so much as it was hard, focused on 531 powerlifting programming, and then started to try focusing weightlifting skill. The story goes ‘I’m bored with P90x at home’ to ‘I love weightlifting and want to compete’.

Looking back on how I found my love of this sport reminds me of Steve Jobs’ speech at Standford: “You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

In my case, it’s not even with a big thing such jobs, career, or soulmate. It’s as simple as finding my hobby and to me – it’s a reminder to never give up in finding ‘true love’ for every single aspect of our life. I’ve found my true love in sport and it really is getting better as I am involved in it. May this contemplation be a reminder for future me when life gets hard and I feel like nothing is right.